Review: Dale Robertson | Project Fear: Season 1

Domestic, familial horror. Sentimental. Suburban. Dale Robertson’s Project Fear is a collection of horror stories that inspire nostalgia for the 90s kid in me. With tales that sit comfortably next to those that were told on television shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Goosebumps, this collection is one that will satiate the hunger of anyone who fondly recalls being spooked as a child.

Most of the stories revolve around families and children, and I assume Robertson is a dog person, seeing as many of the episodes feature man’s best friend in starring roles, which I also appreciate. 

Some of the episodes that stood out to me:

Episode 2: “Chew Toy” deals with the loss of a family pet, and how desperation to memorialize it (as well as procrastinating shopping for a birthday present) can lead to despair.

Episode 5 reminds me of stories about Dybbuk boxes. A little girl finds an odd music box at a yard sale and takes it home to find it impossible to open. Little does she know, this box will change her life forever.

Episode 7: “Stitches” recalls urban legends parents would tell their children to keep them from misbehaving. 

Episode 9 is a continuation of episode 4. Both are written as transcripts from a voice recording of a man who witnesses mass violence and chaos as people begin transforming into monsters. I love the found footage vibe from this set of stories.

Episode 10 is a revenge story of a femme fatale who kidnaps skeezy car salesmen who manipulate and take advantage of women in order to close a sale. This one gave me Saw/The Hunger Games vibes, and was a lot of fun!

Episode 12: Skee-bo. A violent, modern retelling of the Bloody Mary myth. 

Like mentioned before, if you’re a fan of shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Creepshow, this is the collection for you! With 13 spine-tingling tales, you’re sure to find one or two that suit your fancy.

Follow Dale on Twitter @Dale_Dez81 and me @EvanStJones.

Review: Jo Quenell | The Mud Ballad

The sky opened up and rained for me during two of my sessions with The Mud Ballad by Jo Quenell.

We begin in a small, rundown town called Spudsville with Jonathan and Daniel, a set of twins conjoined at the head. We meet them in their tent at the circus they travel with discussing the imminent self-separation Jonathan has planned for the two of them. He performs the deed, and Dawes, the resident circus doctor finds them bleeding out, Daniel’s throat slashed. He is able to save Jonathan and amputate his brother’s corpse from his head, leaving a protrusion like a horn.

Jonathan goes on trial with the circus for the murder of Daniel. He is found guilty and exiled from his carnival community. 

The story continues years later when Dawes returns to Spudsville, surprised to see Jonathan working as a restroom attendant at a bar there. Dawes has quit the circus and travels back to Spudsville to try and settle down. Jonathan offers Dawes a place to stay, if only a moldy sofa in a tiny shed behind the bar. In exchange for his hospitality, Jonathan asks Dawes to help him dig up the bones of his twin because he didn’t have a chance to say goodbye before Daniel’s burial. After the exhumation, things get stranger and more bizarre until all hell breaks loose upon our protagonists and the denizens of Spudsville.

And hell breaking loose in Spudsville is quite the ride. We have children raised to be fierce and violent soldiers, taught to fight with bear hands and teeth, brutal, carnivorous pigs that cannot be satiated, murderous mimes, bloodthirsty demons summoned from the grave, botched slayings and surgeries, Satanic cults, and so much more.

The Mud Ballad oozes grime from its pages, never letting you get more than a few paragraphs before again making you feel ill and as oppressed as some of those living in the rain-soaked dirt fields of Spudsville felt. Jo Quenell’s first novella succeeds in creating a bizarro world rich with characters who operate based significantly on desire and regret. There’s an air of sadness and guilt that pervades The Mud Ballad from start to finish. It isn’t stifling, and there is enough comedy to provide levity, but it’s an undeniable feature of the story (I mention this less as criticism and more as an acknowledgement of well-established tone and mood).

Despite its darkness, The Mud Ballad was a quick and fun read, and I’m already looking forward to reading more stories by Quenell.

Review: Joe Koch | The Wingspan of Severed Hands

Shock and awe. Beautiful and grotesque. These are just a few of the words I could use to describe Joe Koch’s The Wingspan of Severed Hands.

The story takes the insidious concept of the yellow sign from Robert W. Chamber’s mythos he created for his short story collection The King in Yellow. The author uses such vivid imagery and lyrical prose to describe the most depraved and macabre scenes. I’m really into Koch’s writing style, and I learned several beautiful new words (fascia, instar, puerile) to add to my vocabulary.

It seems almost unnecessary to summarize the plot here, as the synopsis from the back of the book does that fine justice. What cannot be synopsized is the feeling and atmosphere created by the wordcraft employed here. There’s really not enough I can say about the fucking poetry in Wingspan. Please do yourself a goddamn favor and pick up this book. If you’re a fan of Robert W. Chambers, cosmic horror, body horror not unlike what you might find in the Saw franchise (but even saying that feels like a real disservice to the author—their prose is so much more amazing than any of the writing in any of those movies, but I couldn’t think of anything better to describe some of the more visceral scenes in the book, and goddamn it’s good), and just quality weird fiction, readdddd it. Now. It’s unlike anything else you’ll ever read. Also look at that cover art!